actually, it is a problem that both law schools and medical schools deal with on a regular basis; commercial condo closures and botox injections shouldn't exactly get you tenure.

On the other hand, using the phrase"polemic of practitioners" ought to be grounds for revoking your tenure.

give me names

give me names

give me names

give me names

not necessarily names

but something to make it less vague

'polemic of practitioners' sounds to me like there is an internal debate going on at this particular university as to whether it is appropriate to have practitioners receive tenure without an academic history.

In this particular case (no names) there was 18 years of academic history, a monograph, a follow up monograph, lectures, published articles, lecture and studio courses, and foreign traveling studios.
The issue is if practicing actually disqualified him.

that's really strange. maybe they're worried he'll be distracted by his practice and won't teach or research properly?

Don't go there OldFogey

agfa8x:
is Greg Lynn distracted by his "practice"? Is Steven Holl distracted by his "practice"? Why do starchitects seem to not have a "distraction" issue?

we can guess forever - you need to supply a better phrase with some actual content, otherwise everything's a huge assumption. yes there is some internal debate at said school, yes it seems to have something to do with some group of professors who ??????
who what?
practice?
as opposed to what?
is it a polemic against these people? a polemic this group has regarding or against something else?
how can anybody tell??

Savannah ?

maestro - hey you don't need to convince me. it seems silly. i suspect there is internal politics involved.

THis is not about a particular person or school (UM, ok I said it).
Its about a broader discussion of the role of practicing architects in architectural education and how schools have consistently taken sides rather than explore the bridging of both. What this professor was told was that he was caught in the "polemic", and that Theory won. So in that case, his practice worked against him.

Vitruvius mentions this in his explanation of practice and theory in an architect's education, but this contemporary polemic has its origins in Libeskind's "An Open Letter to Architectural Educators and Students of Architecture", where he challenges the limitations of both sides in education. The schools however seem to be less interested in this dialogue and are choosing sides, either to convey or defend an academic "brand" (New Urbanism) or overqualify their graduates to technical and practical concerns that constrain the design process.

Nothing will change unless the students entering into these programs are savvy enough to demand a stronger connection between theory and practice.

Or - firms start funding research (as what happens in science and engineering).

it's all about the where the $$$ is coming from - right now it's coming from that student who envisions themselves the next howard roark - and that's who the schools cater to. If they get a huge grant from some large firm to explore design management or to develop something that is better than BIM... then that's what they'll do - and they attract students who are interested in exploring this stuff too...

yes - there's still the market for the individualistic theoretical designer against the world, but the gap will continue to widen unless practice starts investing more into what they want to see academia doing.

Well, that was a bit clearer.
Apologies in advance for the length, though the issue probably deserves longer.

While I aint no expert, I don’t think not having tenure means that someone is going to disappear from an institution, unless they decide that the place can kiss off (or vice versa) - but yes, that wasnt the question.

I would imagine that there are a number of things at stake here and what seems to have won, depending on your default position or your cynicism is the school’s interest in its marketing, or it’s quite legitimate interest in articulating a position on architecture - as opposed to the retention of good teachers whose main concern is about education. That last bit is an assumption though. Even a good teacher has to eventually question the positions, implications, and assumptions of what they’re teaching. In short, everyone’s got a theory.

I find it hard to articulate the camps you’re describing without turning to total clichés (i.e. those who cling to guns and religion against those who don’t mind reading (kidding!)), but it always seems to me that the line drawn between them is bitterly and blindly defended on Both sides, not simply theory against practice. If someone’s practice works against them, I imagine it’s that their practice and position worked against them, and not that practice itself worked against them.

I haven’t read Danny L’s book, cuz frankly, since his’spirit’ book, I don’t think he’s had much of interest to say and I still think your comment’s unclear: Is New Urbanism on the side of Practice or Theory? Is teaching theory overqualifying students? For what? Do you teach students to be functional office cogs or thoughtful individuals? Is architecture a liberal art or not? A practice? A discipline? A job? I don’t think the answer will come from ‘practice’ investing in schools or research, but the situation might be cleared up a bit by both agendas recognizing the values of the other side, as opposed to the typical knee-jerk dismissals we typically see.

UM is the University of Miami, the New Urbanists there are Duany and Plater-Zyberk and others, led in spirit by Vincent Scully, eminence grise of postmodern architecture, who found Yale too avant-garde for his taste. A few years back, he decamped to the swampier climate of Miami.

This issue of practitioners in architecture schools is a major dilemma. I was recently on a paper panel and the other three readers were all PhDs. One of them was trying to argue for the shrinking of design studio within architectural education, and the increased influence of history, theory, and technical programs. To me, this is a tragic position. But it parallels the growth of so many PhD programs, and the need for those people to find jobs.

Many of them haven't practiced, have spent their lives in academia, and aren't necessarily suited to teach design studio. Yet, because of how academia is structured, universities only understand peer-reviewed publications by PhDs as the way to judge tenure and promotion. They don't understand built work. Non-PhDs in a university are seen as anomalies and uncredentialed and not part of the club (whatever their other accomplishments.)

Architecture is perhaps the last department where practitioners without PhDs are granted tenure—and yet many universities are putting pressure on architecture departments to change this.

I think this would be very damaging for the rounded education of an architect. Many of the young career academicians I talk, have worries about not having a practice and missing that part of their architectural discourse.

Very high percentage of architectural graduates end up working in architecture which is a very specific practice based profession.
Some of the best teachers I had were bachelor degree holders with healthy dose of building practice experience and ferocious appetite for architectural theory and discourse. Good teachers are good teachers and it won't make you a good architecture teacher no matter how many degrees you are adorned with.
With the exception of people getting master degrees because they studied something else before, thirty years and beyond ago, a five years education in architecture and licensure was considered pinnacle of necessary study of architecture and a lot of those people were teaching.

Academia is increasingly becoming nepotistic clubhouse where networking and knowing who's who trumping the actual qualifications to teach architecture, design and urbanism.
In my relatively short but growing academic experience with a bachelor degree (I was hired with my other qualifications added on,) I see students are also becoming increasingly complacent and campy too.
In this said current polemical fist fight in academic territorialism, students lose.
Also, I am finding some of my colleagues having seen the recent PhD requirement and trend applying for grants to go back to school to get a doctoral degree somewhere in their mid careers as academicians.
I have no position against PhD issue here but it would be alarming to see the architectural education to turn into a purely theorotical cirriculum eventually and not tapping into the field.
We first become architects to design buildings to be built, and there is a lot to learn from people who do that as well as from people who study and teach theory and history.
Best schools are the ones balance this thoughtfully.

The problem with academia vis-a-vis practice is that teaching matters very little. When I was hired at a university, I was told that teaching was maybe 20% of my job in terms of promotion. The other 80% is research and publications.

How practice and built works are factored into that 80% is extremely important for our profession, to my mind.

phd should not be required to teach. there are trade-offs in our particular field of academia, though. practice and research (of academic type) and educating are not easily reconciled.


Myself, I still am working on 2 lengthy articles for publication in academic peer-reviewed journals based on work for phd, which i finished almost 2 years ago now. Finding time to write that much material is very hard when i also need to go to office. maybe that is what they refer to in the original post?


I have had bad experience with similar issue where professors spoke to me of a dislike for the idea of architects with licenses teaching at architecture school, and have even experienced a certain amount of disdain from tenured professors who thought my 10 years in offices was disgusting, essentially nullifying the fact of my phd and the publications related to it. I recall being shocked at some of these meetings, most of all because the disdain was always coming from professors who had neither phd nor license but were (i thought) great teachers. I have no answer to whatever it is they are disgusted by (or fearful of?), but am not convinced that practicing in office is a bad thing in a teacher...

I know who this thread is about. and that person was unfortunately not a good direction for the future of the school in my opinion, regardless of whether they were licensed or not, their work was generic at best.

There is another side to this story: if you observe jobs posting in the academia closely, except for a few institutions, most would say, "a phd is desirable/desired/preferred...etc"; not, "a phd is mandatory". This is something to think about. In a very strategic way, having tons of practical experience and/or networking within the 'favored circle' is beneficial for lots of teaching jobs too.

As for tenure, the phd is likely to be, and perhaps increasingly so, to be weighed more highly. This is because a tenure is ultimately approved by the university, which is composed of other faculty members who are not necessarily sympathetic--though they are always aware--of the unique epistemological composition of architecture/design (like other professions). Even so, getting your foot through the door as an experienced practitioner is for many places, a recognized and strategic way to enter academia. Whether you want to stay or be permitted to stay thereafter 4-6 years is quite another story.

In my experience, I agree that my best teachers were B.Arch (or sometimes M.Arch) with lots of experience and their own unique perspective in architecture. That was true until I went for further learning and realized that a world of teachers exists beyond architecture and architectural credentials. There are some truly astounding phd teachers as well, and these are usually so well-read that they are able to converse with me on matters of architecture or design, often feinting modesty in order to learn more from our conversations. Most of the time, they were teaching me things about design that are not easily accessible by immediate practical experience. For that you need theory, and theory from different fundamental fields for which architecture is but the tip of the ice-berg!

In this sense, I don't hedge with either 'theory-academia' or 'practice-academia'. There is a proper place for each in the university and the ultimate aim is to facilitate a productive learning environment where a student is able to exploit the intellectual and practical resources the faculty has to offer. That's it. After all, the best we can hope for students is that they go beyond what we teach them. And if it is possible to go by theory from phds, good. If it is possible to go by practical insights from practice, even better. The destination is the same; but it is very rare to arrive there with just one without the other, especially so in architecture.

StationeryMad,

I agree with much of what you say. My perspective has less to do perhaps with the internal dynamics of architecture schools, and more with downward pressure from universities toward doctorate-credentialed faculty in all departments, including architecture.

What this will soon result in, I fear, is an even more specialized niche market of faculty who are practitioners with PhDs (rather than just practitioners or just PhDs without practical experience.) Princeton is apparently looking for just such a person.

The architectural culture in every city I've lived in has been enriched by the close relationship between academia and practice. Often the best architects in a given city also teach at the local university (without PhDs.) But this is a relationship that larger universities often don't understand, because it doesn't fit in with their need for research dollars, publications, and academic credentials.

I worry about the future of architectural education in this scenario.

the politics of academia. hmmmm such fun.

my phd advisor ran an office for 25 years while simultaneously teaching. he was right hand man of pritzker prize winner so maybe is a bit exceptional, but he understands both theory and practice on deep level. it isn't impossible and is frankly expected here.

i don't think it makes him a better educator exactly, especially since he is always very busy with the office as well as administration duties for the uni.

BUT, there is no kind of conversation that students are unable to have with him. since architects here are licensed as engineers it is possible to discuss statics, building code, the history of metabolism, or theoretical methodologies for conducting research at phd level in a single session without any trouble and learn something on every point. i think that is a nice place to be and there is no reason not to expect that level of experience of at least some professors.

farwest1, I see...Isn't Peter Eisenman and Chris Alexander two of the earliest prototypical cases for these kind of phd-practitioner track in the academia? For this reason I don't quite agree that this is a kind of new pressure on phds; rather, I think it is a unique requirement that Princeton is looking for. On this, I suspect this pressure will be ongoing, but it is unlikely to be overwhelming.

Unless one is in building technology/science, it is very challenging to research and teach as one is practicing. By this I do not mean just the time constraint alone; I also refer to the divergences of concerns, interests, and 'polemics' (ha!) between the core interest that justifies one's presence in academia and the core interest that supports practice. The majority of architectural theorists today simply do not research in areas that are of practical concern to the majority of practitioners--except for the faddish sustainability discourse where both are obliged to reference to in this day and age. At least in the past with the likes of Colquhoun, Eisenman and Alexander we have some reference towards the formal self-referentiality of architecture that practitioners might find relevant. But unfortunately, not in theory today. What is however productive is that architectural theory today attempts to refer to the larger forces at work beyond architecture--something I am afraid Princeton is still not quite getting it.

There are concerns today in both practice and academia that the age of excess that defined architecture, and more specifically, the stardom led model of architecture, has lapsed. There will still be our equivalent of Brunelleschi and Frank Gehry in the future; but it is unlikely that those with interesting things to say but however formulated with sketchy research and beautiful graphics will persist. In other words, the field of architecture is facing an unprecedented crisis: what are the models to follow when the 'blobs' and 'the fold' are no longer leading the edge?

Personally I do not think the sustainability discourse, or the recent fad into this has anything to say. Rather, it is this sudden surge of interest that is indicative of a vacuum for a leading practice/concept for architecture.

If you have me guess an answer, I foresee many more new Buckminster Fullers emerging in the next wave. These are educated tinkerers, well-read, and foxes rather than hedgehogs motivated to explore new frontiers of design for human purpose. My speculation is not that far off, for Fuller in his days was concerned with the pressing (real and imaginary) problems of the human condition (and crisis!). This new wave will be independent, because of the erosion of architectural practice and the loss of the institutions--both of faith, trust and resources--caused by the Great Recession. Many are saying the recession is hardly over; the eurozone crisis merely indicated that we are entering into a new phase of this long term Disorder.

And if I can comment on this speculation further, I see this as an unprecedented opportunity for architectural practitioners, which I define as one who does and think at the same time. For once in many generations, architects has to take on a responsibility for the human condition, which I also suppose, was the original mission of architecture--not to capital, but for the mankind.

I am actually quite glad that the "formal self-referentiality" of architecture that you mention is no longer a central part of our discourse. The period in which Eisenman held our profession in thrall (at least, the US wing of it) was especially masturbatory and narcissistic. (Has anyone actually been to the Aronoff Center or the Columbus Convention Center? Yikes!) We thought that conversations about Derridean approaches to Terragni actually mattered to anyone but us.

I'm glad that architecture was able to move away from these meta-meta-concerns and toward what might be considered more of a "realpolitik" architecture--summed up in Rem Koolhaas's comment: "thank god the semantic nightmare is over."

What I see now in academia is a move toward technologies, issues of fabrication, and issues of urban infrastructure. These seem to be architecture's attempt to engage with the outside world, in however limited a way. I haven't bemoaned the move away from theory, except insofar as it has allowed a kind of uncritical celebutect/starchitect become central to practice. What seems to be missing from these conversations, however, are the issues you raise about architecture taking on responsibility for the human condition. To my mind, if a critical mode of practice is to arise again, it won't be in the vein of a self-referential semantic discourse, but rather in the spirit of helping.

I also think that "sustainability" has become kind of a scapegoat. The LEED system, greenwashing, and all the other sterilities imposed on us by a kind of holier-than-though environmentalism mask a broader goal of rethinking architecture in a thermodynamic way. Ecological thinking, biomimetics, biofunctionalism, new technologies based on natural systems: all of this seems poised to reshape architecture in fundamental ways, both at a technological level and at the broader level of discourse.

I think what farwest said is right on, but let me add what I think is a big (possibly the biggest) failure on the part of our profession, and not surprisingly architectural education. There is a huge disjuncture between architectural theory and architecture in practice. The result is that neither is able to inform the other, so we have increasingly isolated realms for academics/theorists and practitioners. As farwest said, it may be an improvement over where we were 10-20 years ago, but I still don't think we're anywhere close to bridging the two.

An architecture degree, after all, is a professional degree. As such, and more than some other fields, the importance of practical experience and practical education in academia seems pretty high to me. I don't know very much about it, but I think we could take quite a bit from one of the European education models of classifying architecture somewhere closer to engineering, as something more technical than the American prevalence for seeing architecture as an art or philosophy.

That's not at all to say that there isn't a place for theory, but the divorce between theory and practice leads to a situation where theory is a self-indulgent, fruitless endeavor. Among the many factors leading to the blandness of our architecture as a country is the inability of many architects to decipher theory and implement it in a meaningful way. The goal of architecture, though, is not to theorize, but to build, and as farwest said, to build better and in a way that contributes something. Therefore, I think the failings of theory and the degree to which theory is given higher priority lie with the theoreticians and academics who are unconcerned with or dismissive of the practicing architect and the technical end of the profession. Theory that can't be measured by built works should be left to the realm of philosophy.

I'm really rambling here and not making as much sense as I'd hoped, but I think the disjuncture between theory and practice is a symptom of a larger American phenomenon. In every field, we seem to study issues/problems/theories more than any other society, and yet we seem to rarely implement the results of such studying into anything tangible. In architecture, this leads to an academy that revers theory over practice and a profession that is unable to draw anything from the invaluable study of architecture.

This is not to say anything of the particular situation that led to this discussion, as most of us don't know the details--the "polemics of practice" might have been a nice way of saying "we don't like you, your work or your teaching." In general, though, I think architectural education is moving in a positive direction--somewhat away from art and criticism without abandoning them, and towards technical and social questions without becoming dry, soulless and thoughtless. I hope that architecture faculty remain a collection largely of practicing architects with a solid number of PhDs and academics. It's a healthy and productive mix. And I hope that the shifting paradigm in education continues and leads to a more effective, balanced profession.

farwest1: 'Masturbatory and narcissistic'! I thought that was what I had in mind, though for some reason, these words did not quite appear on the screen as I typed.

From my own point of view, unfortunately the move to Koolhaas has not been any more enlightening...I thought at least Eisenman and Alexander had the guts of sticking to the gun; but Koolhaas is a wunderkind at a candy store who became wide-eyed at everything from urbanism to being a hollywood star (literally...). His notion of the 'city', as his reputable sharp wits, has already become obsolete.

I agree that technologies, fabrication and infrastructure studies--including that all encompassing and obligatory sustainable urbanism angle--are the new hotbeds of activity. Yet something is still lacking. It seems that as the world is undergoing a fairly substantial melt-down, architects are being left on the shelf.

Personally I find the bio-adaptive approaches rather fascinating. Yet I perceive that mankind is set apart from the rest of the biosphere by the fact that they design their own environment and their world(s). In other words, mankind is unnatural. Therefore to mimic the biosphere in the way we build seems...too 'avatarish'.

Let me bring this discussion back to its intended essence:

Building is the end goal of every architect.
If architectural educators do not promote this truth, then they do not belong in academia.
Any theory, method, or technology cannot be proven unless it is executed in a built reality.

"those who relied only upon theories and scholarship were obviously hunting the shadow, not the substance" Vitruvius, Ch. 1

@Maestro: I definitely don't agree with "building is the end goal of every architect." Even though building is central in architecture, there's more to architectural thinking than being built: it's about developing ideas/ideals, research into possible scenario's for the future etcetera. Does that imply that I do not belong in practise?

FrankLloydMike: 'An architecture degree, after all, is a professional degree',

totally agree. while i am proud of my education, it's closer to a masters degree with no professional/undergraduate degree. i loved every second of school but it was close to 95% theory.

it's embarrassing that my engineer S.O. looks over my shoulders of ARE study materials and says 'oh i remember all of that from x course in college'. while i was slaving over models for my next critique, my S.O. was in class working towards a professional degree. guess which one of us earns more, has more job security and experiences steady advancement?

i'm not discounting the importance of design education and the academic world will tell you it's your only chance to experiment. this is true. however, if you would like to pursue advanced theory, you can enroll in a master's degree program following the professional degree.

it's time to stop throwing fresh grads into the market with nothing they can leverage themselves on.

usernametaken: Architectural thinking is just that-thinking As architects, we are created (by our schools) to attain the goal of building(verb) in the physical environment. Everything we do should be oriented to attain this goal for ourselves, and our students. Anything that distracts us from this is not useful in attaining this goal. Focusing on building (noun) leaves students with the skill set of art historians.

If that's the case, why should an architect-to-be attend college? Would not a vocational training or apprenticeship be more suited to the task of building (verb)?

A professional degree is simply the contingent product of institutional arrangement--in itself it means nothing. What is the use of a professional degree if tacitly, the profession is no longer as well-defined as when this 'professional' degree was introduced--the institutional product of a different milieu?

To compare compensations between building trades is a good way to start but hardly a useful way to end thinking on this matter. Architects in the conventional sense simply do not get paid, relative to engineers or project managers. But if one combines architecture with engineering, or architecture with building tech (in one of the specialty), they will get paid, likely more than any one of these independent specialists. At the end is what you offer--your unique combination that makes you unique for the project at hand.

But to get to that stage when you are able to combine disciplinary perspectives, vocational training or apprenticeship is unlikely to get you there quickly. In the age of Frank Lloyd Wright, one can go by the apprenticeship way, and if one is lucky, one learns how to build like an artist in 10 years from the old man and then another 10 years by oneself. That's 20 years. This does not work anymore today. 20 years in architecture so far meant 2 major upheavals that have damaged the profession, perhaps beyond repair.

This is why there is a need for theory, and maybe by that, a need for architects to be educated in universities and not in the shop or the vocational institute. I am unsure of what 'theory' is being bashed here (but I think I have an idea); but theory is precisely useful because you don't have to test everything, which consumes time and resources, and that you are able to understand principles and forces that cannot be discerned by observation or senses. In short, with theory, putting together abstract principles is easier than if you tried doing it without. Being 'theoretical' also means that it is easier for you to switch careers, rather than suffering the fate of obsolescence.

It is fair to criticize architecture education of dabbling too much in po-mo theories. That's a fair criticism because it has elevated the theorists in architecture along with others in other disciplines, but does nearly nothing for three generations of architects. But without a commitment to 'theory', even irrelevant theory, architecture can only take the path of muddling through, even when the world today is getting more complex, and forces are making conventional attitudes and needs for the built environment somewhat redundant.

OldFogey, since you already went there, I'll bite. Are you serious with your question? Its simultaneously elitist and (ironically) idiotic.

There really are no "great" architectural colleges in the South (specifically Deep South.)

Sorry! And there aren't really any good firms in the South either. Are you really a Southern firm if your firm is in Atlanta, your owned by a firm in New York that's owned by a Danish man... and all your firm's work is in Belarus or Kuala Lampur? Or does your firm simply exist in its location because of its access to airport hubs and cheap taxes?

Most of the schools in the South are relatively young. And many of the booms and busts in the South have meant that they lack continuity and tradition.

Judging by a sense of place alone, the South is an architectural and Cultural graveyard of bygone eras propped up by off-the-wall corporate headwaters, sparse tourism, bad land deals and government projects.

Outside of some mountains, a few mega cities and a handful of ports, the South is an expanse of dying marginalism rooted in pesticide-soaked former malaria swamps.

Building is not the goal of architecture.

Let me try to clarify by comparison: If you are an engineer, you don't have to make the equipment you design -- you have a horde of fabricators who do that for you. they are good at operating equipment, but if you asked them to find the solution to an engineering problem they would do it by trial and error. The engineer contributes to an enterprise by thinking the problem through and optimizing the solution, as imagined within a set of constraints.

By the same comparison, people who build are called contractors. They typically proceed by trial and error as well, and once they are doing well at something, they are reluctant to try anything else without a clear set of instructions, and someone else to soak up the liability the new idea might generate.

An architect is someone who can think about the built environment. Certainly, that means that an architect has to understand something about how contractors normally work, including how things are made. It also means that some part of architecture has to get built, and that when it gets built -- assuming the architect wants it built properly -- the architect has to work with contractors.

On the other hand, there are innumerable examples of works that change the built environment without building. There isn't any conclusive evidence that Vitruvius built anything other than siege equipment. Sorkin argues that building and zoning codes have more impact on the shape of the built environment than any other factor. The late entries to the Tribune tower competition are almost all better than the built one. And some of the best new architecture institutions are taking what we know about design out of the built environment.

Architects contribute by thinking, not by building. Unlike an engineer however, architecture is capable of imagining a world with different constraints, which would be better. Sometimes those constraints can be realized differently by persuasion, and something extraordinary gets built, and other times the argument is complex and subtle enough that it requires expression by more durable means.

People in other professions are called architects when they make us realize a different way to live. Robert MacNamara was called the architect of the Vietnam War because his vision of American life shaped a generation. Tim Berners-Lee get to be the architect of the Web not because he built the network, but because he explained how to use it.

Thinking can take the form of drawing, modeling, and writing just as meaningfully as it can building. You don’t need an architect’s license to build single-family homes too, but if you do so in a thoughtful way, you can be an architect.

Theory however is not just thinking – it is thinking about thinking. In general, theory is part of being a good thinker, although there are some really interesting thinkers that don’t do theory. There are also people who make it their primary preoccupation, and they are called philosophers.

To me, this is the real reason why we ought to be obsessed with academic credentials – at least in so far as the PhD is an acronym for a Philosophical Doctorate. We need people who are dedicated to making thinking better. Because otherwise we are, as Stanley Tigerman relishes saying, “Mechanics.”

I think it is quite reasonable to say that we have a crisis of theory in architecture at the moment. Paper architecture, by which I mean the exploration of a whisp of an idea in architectural media, has become ideologically pervasive. For fear of disrupting the artist’s delicate intent, we only ask clarifying questions, we never suggest that there is an actual error in the exploration. Certainly, if we do pass judgment, it has become uncouth to express it (except perhaps in an internet forum).

The net result is that we have no real sense of give-and-take in dialogue; we have no real discourse. Architectural theory is like some Phillip Glass performance, in which each person gets shouts a manifesto from any part of the stage they happen to occupy; no one on the stage is interested in what anyone else is doing, and no one in the audience can make sense of any single idea. Everyone wears black, and we all applaud at the end.

my former boss became an architect by apprenticeship. it is pretty common here in japan because there is no such thing as an accredited degree system at all. if you can pass the exam is enough. the result? theory = zero. knowledge of history= zero. design quality? meh.

school is worth a lot. those who say theory is not worthwhile or that the point of architecture is only to build have perhaps not seen what happens when that is the daily reality. One look at Tokyo will tell you all you need to know on that score.

anyway, i am not so quick to chuck out all the ubnuilt masterworks by garnier, by the russian constructivists, etc etc. there is worth in their ideas even if not built, and the study of such things is not what i would call a distraction. to the contrary, it is enriching...

but you know i can only mention those folks because i know you studied them in school and know what i am getting at. my old boss? he didn't even know the works of japanese masters, never mind the rest of the world. that meant a lot of time re-inventing fairly rusty wheels. i didn't find that aspect of work particularly rewarding.

i think you are lucky to be educated enough to be in a position to say your education was crap ;-)

Unicorn, are you one of those people who never leave Manhattan?

Off the top of my head: Firms in the south....owned by southerners....doing work in the south (and elsewhere):

Mack Scogin Merrill Elam
Buidling Studio
Plexus R+D
Marlon Blackwell
....MANY others as well.

As far as the relatively young schools:

Georgia Tech established 1908

Auburn...oldest program ‘specifically in the Deep South’...I believe 1907...but certainly not "great"

UVA - although I expect you'll probably say its not 'southern'.

Lastly, if that's what you gathered about the South's sense of place, you did it solely from an airplane.

mespellrong, good points. But I think you are conflating theory with ideas. Thinking about thinking is meta-ideation, but nonetheless, ideas. This is why as you said, there are thinkers who are not theorists. Theories should have some limited predictive or at least, cautionary capacities. In other words, theories are mental toolkits used for thinking and acting, but they are neither ideas nor thinking.

I appreciate your perspective on the phd but you may be overly optimistic there. General consensus has it that a phd is conferred for an original contribution to knowledge. So yes, there is something very philosophical about this formulation. Yet if we look at how phds are produced (and reproduced) in academic circles, we are likely to realize a few things:

1. long years specializing in an often arcane topic
2. And perhaps because of (1), phds tend to be less philosophical but rather, more 'mechanical'. By this I refer to the inability, as well as the lack of incentive, to question what one is doing because it has become the only support for practical living. In other words, there are likely no more practical options--sadly--after one's phd.
3. groupthink: phds that clique with other phds tend to stick together. This is the pejorative connotation of what is usually referred to as a 'discipline'. Surely there are also good things; but the function of this pejorative is to bar uncomfortable questions and ideas from the outside, and at the same time, to reinforce what is favorable on the inside.
4. Because of (3), disciplines stagnate or die after some time.

I am afraid the Socratic version of a PhD, which I call SoPhD(!) is very rare today. We can see some of these SoPhD in early Alexander, Lefebvre, Sennett, and his teacher, Arendt, Popper and a few others (Louis Kahn comes close in architectural thinking). In any case, people with comprehensive learning and leanings. But phds today are produced to be specialists, hence, in contradiction to the modality of thought need for work at the philosophical level.

I see the willingness to question has to a certain extent, died, when specialists became PhDs. This is because for many of them, whether in science or in the humanities, they specialized too early. Many of them have not been given sufficient time and space to gather a breadth needed for philosophical work. How is it possible to question--in an ignorantly but intelligent manner--when all we know is what our 'fields' have artificially constrained us to think and act?

This is also why I think SoPhD, the true PhDs are going to be a rare breed in this age of specialization and 'expertise' authority. There are still a few of them if we look carefully. Yet if these folks are not careful, they tend to be relinquished to the role of 'historian of ideas' rather than the torch bearer at the forefront of their respective fields.

I live in the South, brah. Four-aught-seven4LYFE.

Georgia Tech-- "Under the leadership of Bush-Brown, the Architecture students declined to 66 during the depression, reached a low of 22 students during World War II, and then exploded to 462 post-war students.

...

In 1948, the new School of Architecture was formed and made parallel to other professional schools within the newly renamed Georgia Institute of Technology."

You got me on Auburn. But like Mack Scogin Merrill & Elam and building studio, they profess a different version of the South.

There are four versions of the South: Colonial, Antebellum, Reconstruction and Post-War. What you typically see associated with the South is the abject poverty and desolation created in the South during the Reconstruction and on into the war.

I.e.;


But this is what made the South renowned internationally:


I'm not necessarily knocking one style or method of develop over another... just point out that there isn't a successive school of thought throughout much of the South. And most of the radical social changes in the South (with the major obvious exception) were caused by outside forces. In the waves of build and bust, traditions died as people abandoned many places in the South.

And even then, Rural Studio and that very odd semi-impoverished image of the South that's a common architectural focus amongst "Southern" architects is being pushed out by the post-war corporate and information age boom that's bring a whole new variety of architectural styles, urban planning and new traditions.

With the exception of the Antebellum, many Southern cultural preferences are not in line with the kind of permanence and physical environments that are conducive to "knowledge spillovers." Those are the primary drivers to the development of vibrant and lasting schools of thought that draw attention nationally and internationally.

So, yeah... loved the antebellum, hate what built it. Hate the reconstruction, loved the jazz. But for an area of the United States that's home to 75 million people and roughly 5-7 trillion dollars of GDP, there should be a whole hell of a lot more here.

Are you saying there are successful singular schools of thought anywhere today? Where are regional architects not being pushed out by the post-war corporate and information age boom? If you want the continuity of a singular period like antebellum you’ll have to exist in a different era. Singularity happens nowhere now, and I don’t think I’d necessarily consider that a successful school of thought anyway.

....And of course Building Studio and Rural Studio profess a different version of the South. That new vision is what draws attention to those southerners ‘both nationally and internationally’, and it is specifically their ability to develop a new outlook on a region with such an appalling past that probably makes them most relevant.

By they way, some people of the Deep South don’t necessarily consider ‘four-aught-seven’ southern. If I lived that close to Disney I might have the same outlook as you.

stationary, out of curiosity where did you get your opinion of phd? i hope you didn't have to go through that? for me phd was not like that at all. i had issues i could complain about, but wouldn't characterise the process as clique-ish or group-speak-ish and the work i did was/is relevant to how we live/build in cities today in very practical way.

to be perfectly honest i would say phd is beginning of learning a specialty, not the end game.

One of the strengths of architecture as a discipline, to my mind, has always been its speculative and future-oriented practice.

Much of the theorizing in architecture tends therefore to be rhetorical, polemical, and projective. This is actually one of the things I like about our profession--versus, say, engineering, where any theorizing needs to be firmly grounded in data, dry, scientific, supported. I was drawn to architecture because of writers like Le Corbusier, Venturi, Rossi, Koolhaas and Siza (who's a great writer, by the way) all of whom write in a speculative way.

Many of the architecture PhDs I've met, because of the rigors of their training, seem to regard this sort of thinking as overblown and uncontrolled. My experience with PhDs has been similar to what StationeryMad mentioned above.

I have a friend in an English PhD program who has spent the last five years studying upholstery in 19th century British literature. He finds it fascinating. Does anyone else? He is also perpetually at odds with his advisors over small nuances of reading of this literature. His training has taught him to be wary of broad speculation, but what is he missing in the process? .

Jump--through careful observations, lots of conversations and reflecting on my own experience--in relation to the students in other disciplines. To be fair, there are different kinds of phds program. Some are more practice-oriented; some are project-oriented (especially in design); and some are, as I mentioned, very discipline-oriented. And then there are differences based on where you study. The UK/Australia is much shorter; similar things can be said of Europe in general. In these programs, one has to have a very clear idea and the time taken is the time needed to do the dissertation. In American universities, the program is usually much longer and therefore, more chances for groupthink to occur.

I am glad that your phd experience has been one of the beginning and not the end. I would say the same thing for myself too. However this does not mean I don't see academic reproduction going on in the most fruitless and meaningless sort of way--adding nothing and saying nothing.

farwest1--I have a book published by skira, with writings and sketches by Siza. Full agreement that he is a fantastic writer--I think he is the greatest 'comic' writer in architecture; someone capable of writing with 'sketches'. His little restaurant (don't remember that name now...) and the bank (again, cannot remember the name now) rank as two of my most memorable designs, even though I have never visited them beyond what was printed on paper.

I would be very very worried by students who are deliberately argumentative because of slight deviations in interpretation...Fortunately this is very rare in architecture but in political theory where texts is a big thing, this is fairly common.

All knowledge is useful to some degree; some are useful here and some over there. In the pursuit of distinction--i.e., this is superior to that--we have in fact become not only foolish, but stupid. This applies for phd as well.

"Theory however is not just thinking – it is thinking about thinking. In general, theory is part of being a good thinker, although there are some really interesting thinkers that don’t do theory"

hmmmm.

There is an African saying that says "if you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there". As architects (even PhD's) one needs to know where they are going. To make a building a work of architecture requires both theory and technical ability (not one exclusive of the other) and a high proficiency in both. A "paper" work of architecture, or propositions on how to make one is a partial achievement of the real goal which is to see it realized and built.

if "builidng is not the goal of Architecture", then you are effectively saying that the goal of architecture is to not build.

mespellwrong, I agree that architects don't "build" in the literal sense, but what I (and I think some others) mean by "build" is really design, or think with the intent to build perhaps. I think it's fairly clear that no one is suggesting that the role of the architect is to be a contractor; and I think most of us would agree that architects must, as you say, do more than simply optimizing a solution or conceiving of construction. By "build" I mean something closer to the definition "to develop according to a systematic plan, by a definite process, or on a particular base" than "to form by ordering and uniting materials by gradual means into a composite whole." Perhaps, I should have said "design", but I think that misses something, too.

As such, I disagree with your statement that "Architects contribute by thinking, not by building." If we mean "build" in the literal sense of fabrication, then I would agree; but if we mean "build" in the sense of developing, designing or constructing an idea, I would say that architects certainly contribute by building more than by thinking. As you say, architectural theory is not philosophy, because (I would say) it implies an intent to be made manifest. You say:

"On the other hand, there are innumerable examples of works that change the built environment without building. There isn't any conclusive evidence that Vitruvius built anything other than siege equipment. Sorkin argues that building and zoning codes have more impact on the shape of the built environment than any other factor. The late entries to the Tribune tower competition are almost all better than the built one. And some of the best new architecture institutions are taking what we know about design out of the built environment. Architects contribute by thinking, not by building."

I agree with everything until you get to the last statement. You cite the unrealized designs for Tribune competition and paper architecture, and jump mentions the unbuilt works of the Russian Constructivists, but these works are not thoughts or manifestos; they are designs. They are designs that were never constructed for sure, but they are designs whose designers intended for them to be realized, or at the very least intended them for consideration to be realized. In this way, I would not classify these people or these designs as "thinkers/theorists" or "thoughts/theories" but as "designers/builders" and "designs/unbuilt works". Excluding spontaneous construction, the act of designing is among the first in the process of building. It is less abstract and more immediate than building, as it implies the possibility of construction, of manifestation.

I get what you're saying, and perhaps we disagree more on semantics than anything else, but I do not think the goal of architecture is simply to think about the built environment. There is a reason why people like Eisenman, Hadid, Corbusier and so on are called architects, while people like Frampton, Hays and so on are called architectural theorists. It is not because the former did not think about the built environment, or because they did not contribute theoretical ideas to architecture, but because their primary focus is on building, whether the designs are realized or not. Similarly, it is not to say that the latter have not contributed ideas that have influenced the built environment, but the fact that they are known as theorists rather than architects speaks to the goal of architecture.

You say "The net result is that we have no real sense of give-and-take in dialogue; we have no real discourse." And again, I agree, but I think that the more important lack of dialogue is not within the narrow world of theory, but between theory and practice.

Stationary puts it quite beautifully and succinctly: "In other words, theories are mental toolkits used for thinking and acting, but they are neither ideas nor thinking." Architectural theory without implementation is fruitless. It may not be meaningless, but without a practical profession to influence it is little more than abstract philosophy. Practical architecture without theory can exist, but it will likely be drab at best, and more likely detrimental. The point is that theory is a means by which to understand architecture, a tool with which to build, as well as a tool with which to access that which is built. Not all theory must fulfill this role; the world is certainly complex enough to accommodate theory as a tool with which to develop other theories, but if this is all it leads to it, theory exists in a vacuum outside the built world.

I don't want to sound like I am bashing theory. Theory has a very important role to play in architecture, but I think its role is to inform the process, act, means and type of building. A good practitioner needs an understanding of theory (and history, as jump notes).

What happens at colleges is 95% political. My guess is this guy wasn't liked by the people on the tenure committee. They have to give a reason and they did.

I wouldn't read into it any more than that.

That's why it is next to impossible to get an Academic job without an advocate on the inside.